The disclosure is related to “green” ceramic tapes a fabrication method for making the same.
“Green” ceramic tapes are today generally made by tape casting. The main purpose for these tapes is in the electronic, sensor, and ceramic industries where customized and dedicated components are made. Tapes for these purposes are stacked after being structured, punched, embossed, printed and adapted to the final use. Generally, the thickness of the tape cast tapes seems to be limited commercially to around 400 μm, with thicknesses obtained in research environments reaching about 700 μm. The sintering of these components takes place after the processing and stacking.
Especially in the electronic industry sophisticated, multilayered components are made with the low temperature cofired ceramic (LTCC) tapes, where electric components and electric connections are printed onto the “green” tapes before a lamination and sintering occur. Tape cast tapes or films are generally limited in thicknesses to some few hundred micrometers. This works well for pure electronic, stacked components. However, components like a lab-on-chip (LOC) and sensors sometimes demand coarser channels and structures. In order to achieve this, several tape cast films will have to be structured, cut, and laminated to make up a sufficiently thick structure. The precision of the deep details in the laminated structure may in many cases be insufficient. For devices made to utilize a temperature difference (thermoelectric devices), the devices will often need insulating material thicknesses of the order of 1 mm or above. With conventional tape cast tapes, this means again that a high number of thin tapes will have to be structured (cut, punched) and then laminated, again with lack of accuracy.